The ḥadīth corpus is in the news folks. Journos keep calling the text in question an 𝘐𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘤 hadith (is there any other kind?) .
"Rihanna sparks outrage after using Islamic hadith in lingerie show" middleeasteye.net/news/rihanna-i…
The London-based artist who used the vocal samples has issued an apology.
The clearest line from sample of the original Arabic is:
يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ إِنَّا نَقْتُلُ الآنَ فِي الْعَامِ الْوَاحِدِ مِنَ الْمُشْرِكِينَ كَذَا وَكَذَا
"Messenger of God, we already kill in a single year such-and-such number of pagans ..."
(Which is a little weird.)
What a find! 2 lines of Arabic poetry - often cited in Abbasid-era belles lettres as being pre-Islamic and 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 - found north of Mt. Arafat near Mecca. It's dated (!) by the inscriber, Abū Jaʿfar ibn Ḥasan al-Hāshimī, to 98 A.H. (716-17 C.E.). Here's what it says..
1) The turning of Sol effaces the new / afnā l-jadīda taqallub aš-šamsī 2) as does its rising where he passed not the night / wa-ṭulūʿuhā min hayṯu lā tamsī 3) Its rising is white, brilliant and pure / ṭulūʿuhā bayḍāʾu ṣāfiyatun
4) Its setting yellow as Yemeni 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑠 / ġurūbuhā ṣafrāʾu ka-l-warsī
The word 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑠 = yellow-dye made from a perennial plant, Memecylon tinctorium, cultivated in Yemen. This line has many attestations (albeit w/ slightly different wordings) in Abbasid literature ...
This inscription contains an interesting phrase, written سلم أنتم|slm ʾntm. This phrase may be read: silm ʾantum, "You are at peace!" – if so it’s an extremely important attestation to a phrase appearing in treaties attributed to the prophet Muḥammad and his era. Examples...
-Ibn Saʿd's 𝑇̣𝑎𝑏𝑎𝑞𝑎̄𝑡, 1: 238:
The Messenger of God writes to al-Hilāl, ruler of Baḥrayn: silm anta fa-innī ʾaḥmadu ilayka allāh …
-ibid., 1: 240
He writes to Yuḥannah b. Ruʾbah and the chiefs of Aylah:
silm anta fa-innī ʾaḥmadu ilayka allāh …
-ibid., 1: 243-44:
He writes to al-Ḥārith, Masrūḥ, and Nuʿaym ibn ʿAbd Kulāl of Ḥimyar: silm antum mā ʾāmantum bi’llāh wa-rasūlihi …
-Balādhurī, 𝐹𝑢𝑡𝑢̄ℎ̣ 𝑎𝑙-𝑏𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑎̄𝑛, 60
He writes in the letter to the Jews of Maqnā: silm ʾantum fa-ʾinnahu ʾunzila ʿalayya …
The 𝑚𝑖ℎ̣𝑛𝑎ℎ (“inquisition”) instituted by the caliph al-Maʾmūn in 833 CE is a common set piece of Abbasid history, esp. due to its exaltation of Ibn Ḥanbal as a hero of early Sunnism. Lesser known are the other 𝑚𝑖ℎ̣𝑛𝑎ℎs, such as Ghulām Khalīl's against the Ṣūfīs …
This later miḥnah was instigated by a scholar named Ghulām Khalīl (d. 275/888); he became a popular, charismatic preacher of Baghdad and, through his reputation for piety, curried favor with the mother of the Abbasid regent al-Muwaffaq. Through his patroness, named either...
Asḥar or Umm Isḥāq, he wielded considerable influence over Abbasid elites and the masses alike (at least according to the historian Ibn al-Aʿrābī). Word of “the vile teachings (𝑎𝑙-𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑎̄ʿ𝑎̄𝑡) ” of the Ṣūfīs of Baghdād reached Ghulām Khalīl and, ...
A famous story is told about the Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd's meeting with the pietist scholar Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ while on Ḥajj. Hārūn sought out many scholars—like Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah and ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī—but only Fuḍayl tried to evade him. But once they met ...
Fuḍayl reproached him for regarding the caliphate as a blessing (niʿmah)—it is rather a tribulation (balāʾ), he says.
Fuḍayl then recounts to the caliph a pious tale about the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, famed for his piety. When the caliphate fell to him, ʿUmar..
gathered around him three pious scholars to admonish him before he embarked on his rule: Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī, and Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah al-Kindī. Each man gave the caliph his somber advice.
Some folks reading this thread saw a "Shii bias" in noticing a textual problem in this or that passage of the Qur'an; however, this is not the case. These are commonplace "textual puzzles" compiled by early scholars of the Qur'an that this Shii literature reacts to. For example..
John Wansbrough in his 𝑄𝑢𝑟'𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑐 𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑠 (1977) brings attention to a passage appended to Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s (d. 767 CE) 𝑇𝑎𝑓𝑠𝑖̄𝑟 𝑎𝑙-𝑘ℎ𝑎𝑚𝑠𝑖𝑚ʾ𝑎𝑡 𝑎̄𝑦𝑎ℎ, which lists nine problems in total solved in quick fashion by Ibn ʿAbbās ...
And Abū Ḥusayn al-Malaṭī (d. 987) includes a much expanded list from Muqātil on a total of 25 textual problems from the Qurʾan in his 𝑎𝑙-𝑇𝑎𝑛𝑏𝑖̄ℎ 𝑤𝑎-𝑙-𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑑. This sort of literature expands ... menadoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/ssg/content/pa…
Today I immensely enjoyed reading Joseph Witztum’s article in 𝑆ℎ𝑖𝑖 𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤. He takes up a specific aspect of an interesting issue: Shiʿi criticisms of the version of the Qurʾan codified by the caliph ʿUthmān (r. 644-656) ... doi.org/10.1163/246824…
Shiʿi criticisms of ʿUthmān's codex are of many types – and many other Shiʿah rejected their premises, too – but they are of intrinsic historical interest. Sunni accounts were conscious of these and oft used ʿAlī as a mouthpiece to defend ʿUthmān’s codex of the Qurʾan and ...
to deflect criticism, for ex., of his alleged burning of older copies. (Below in this passage record by the 9th-cent. historian Ibn Shabbah, ʿAlī denounces those who call ʿUthmān ℎ̣𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑎̄𝑞 𝑎𝑙-𝑚𝑎𝑠̣𝑎̄ℎ̣𝑖𝑓, “the Qurʾan incinerator".) Witztum discusses, however, the ...